My son Steven, a doctor, called me this past Saturday.

“You better check on Grandpa.  He’s had a pain in his stomach for three or four days and I think he should go to an emergency room.  He needs to have tests that can’t be done at an Urgent Care.  Take him to a good hospital.”

An hour later I was on an airplane back to Los Angeles. My dad is 102 years old. The caretaker who usually stays with him had been on vacation for almost two weeks and she wouldn’t be back until the Tuesday after Labor Day weekend.

“Hi, Dad.  How are you?” I asked as soon as I arrived at his house.

“I’m fine.  But I’ve had this pain in my stomach for three or four days.  My doctor is out of town.  If it wasn’t a long weekend I would just wait to see him on Monday.”  Understandably, Dad doesn’t like hospitals. He especially doesn’t like the expense. He hates to pay his Medicare co-pay. Even so, I followed Steven’s advice and drove Dad to the emergency room at the UCLA Medical Center.  He didn’t complain, which was a pretty good indication that he was in significant pain.

We found the usual surge of holiday weekend patients waiting to be seen.  Dad was examined after about forty-five minutes.  The emergency room doctors ordered an MRI of his abdomen as well as an ultrasound.  They also started him on three IV antibiotics, including Vancomycin.  (I paid the $75.00 co-pay charged by the emergency room).

I’m not a doctor. I don’t know much about the practice of medicine.  I do know that a few seconds after the nurse took Dad’s blood pressure (which, incidentally, is better than mine), he suddenly became unresponsive and stopped talking.  Then his eyes rolled back into his head.

The nurse called for a doctor.  The next thirty seconds seemed like a lifetime.  Or a deathtime. I was terrified.   I thought to myself, “This is it.  In a few minutes my father is going to be dead.”

The doctor arrived, and didn’t seem especially concerned.

I know that any of us can die at any given moment. Even so, none of us are prepared for the sudden death of a loved one, or for the moments just before.  I remembered my young assistant Cecile who died ten years ago when her sports car flew off a dark mountain road and landed two hundred feet below.  I wasn’t prepared for her death, and I certainly wasn’t prepared for my dad to die in a hospital emergency room two days ago.

Our experience of time is always subjective, but after forever my father came out of his daze.

It’s now Monday, and Dad is scheduled to go home tomorrow.  With the help of antibiotics he has experienced his usual quick recovery, an outcome for which I’m very grateful.

My message to you, and to myself, is this:  Cherish every moment.

Poof.

Alan

This morning, while I was still in bed, Sprite brought me hot chocolate. It was perfect.

Later, at breakfast, she said, “I’m glad you liked it. I was worried I hadn’t added enough cream.  I was already halfway to the bedroom when I decided to go back and add more because I wanted to make sure it was just right.”

The hot chocolate was delicious, but that is not my point. In life, it matters that you do things right, not merely to enjoy a better result, but to experience the pleasure – indeed, the enchantment – of doing your very best.

My father is 102 years old.  He was a professional musician who played the French horn.  He still teaches young students how they can improve in the art of playing a wind instrument.  At a recent seminar at the University of Arizona, my Dad said to his class, “I don’t care if you are practicing your instrument on a desert island with no one to hear you within a thousand miles.  You still have to do it right.  Every time you put that mouthpiece to your lips you need to focus on doing your best.  You are creating habits which will serve you either poorly or well.”

When I was a kid my mind was always working, especially when it came to finding shortcuts.  Why take thirty minutes to complete an assignment if I could figure out how to finish it in ten and then read a comic book?  I used to value speed above accuracy, and saving time more than doing a complete job.

I was still “shortcut Alan” in law school.  To graduate I needed to finish one final paper.  I was working full time during the day and studying for the bar exam at night, so my research was minimal.  I triple spaced the paper and used three inch margins.  My professor was, shall we say, disappointed.  Luckily, he flipped a mental coin and gave me full credit for the paper so I could graduate and take the bar exam the following week.  Thanks, Professor Ratner.

When I practiced law I was a good attorney, but I wasn’t great. I was still keen on finding short cuts.  As a result, I didn’t enjoy my work very much because I realized, on some level, that I wasn’t doing my best. Also, I was always concerned that my work would be criticized.

Thankfully, I’ve changed.  I admit that sometimes I postpone a business task when I don’t have the time to complete it properly.  But I always look at original sources to verify the numbers, and I look at the problem from different points of view.  Over the past fifty years I’ve learned to review the finished product carefully.

Doing it right is even more important in my writing.  I write quickly. I could create a first draft of this blog in twenty minutes.  But then I wouldn’t be doing my best.   So I slow down, and I keep on revising and making further improvements.  Then my editor takes a pass.  Finally, I polish the final draft until I’m completely satisfied.

I’m still tempted to take short cuts, but I don’t because I want to give both my business and you everything I can.  More importantly, I want to experience the deep fulfillment of doing my very best.

Hot chocolate, anyone?

Alan

Grrrrr.  A jackhammer is working on the street outside my office. It’s ruining my morning.  I can’t concentrate with the constant tat-tat-tat bouncing in my head.

Eventually the annoying clatter recedes into the background and I find myself answering emails and questions from colleagues. I feel almost normal.  Then, just before lunch, suddenly I feel great.  What happened?  Oh, yes.  The jackhammer stopped.

All of us, after a time, stop consciously noticing the negative impact of something annoying. Whether it’s a jackhammer or a stressful relationship, we will eventually tune it out.  But the background tension still remains.

My friend Brad (not his real name) was a dealer in rare coins.  He was a character right out of a Damon Runyon story and I enjoyed talking to him.  One day, however, I discovered that he had overcharged me on many of my purchases.  Then he stopped payment on a check he gave me to buy back a rare coin.  I had to hire an attorney to sue him.

That’s when I realized that Brad was not my friend and would always take advantage of me.  I decided to never see, communicate with, or do any business with him again.

Brad texted, emailed, or called me every day for three months with a variation of the same message: “Alan, I have a deal we can make a lot of money on.” Then he tried to contact me every other day.  Finally, his messages arrived just once a week.  This went on for three years.  I never responded. Now I realize he was robbing me of precious time that I could have spent with my family or real friends.  I am grateful to have my time back.

I often used to see another friend, Roy.  Over many years he became, to say the least, cantankerous.  He was always critical of me, negative about everything else, and wouldn’t tell me why.  The last time I saw Roy I felt a tightness in my chest before I walked through the door to his home,  For the very first time I realized that whenever I was about to see him I unconsciously braced myself to defend against his expected attacks.  Needless to say, I don’t have contact with Roy anymore either.

My life is much simpler when I spend time with friends and family who like being with me and who are not constantly argumentative, contentious, or passive aggressive.

This week I’ve been on vacation, and this morning I noticed that I’m enjoying myself a far more without the stress that I felt on my last vacation when a certain distant cousin joined us.  She is very “high maintenance,” and takes a lot of time and attention. “Won’t you drive me into town,” or, “I forgot to buy cream for my coffee.  Would you please go back and get me some?”

I take a vacation to relax, not to run errands for someone else.  I’m happy to help out, but with this cousin I always had to unconsciously prepare myself for her next demand.  I couldn’t enjoy myself, though at the time I didn’t realize how strongly I was affected.  As you can probably guess, I won’t spend any more vacations with this cousin.

You and I face stress every day that we might not even be aware of any more.  Your life is going to be much happier when you figure it out and . . .

TURN THE JACKHAMMER OFF.

Alan